The Commodore by Patrick O'Brian

Source of book: I own this.

This book is number 17 in the Aubrey/Maturin series of novels about the British Navy during and after the Napoleonic Wars. I have read all of the previous books, and reviewed the last few for my blog. Because I do not duplicate all of the background information in each post, it is probably best to read them in order. And by all means, read the books in the correct order, as a particular adventure will often be stretched across several books.

The Letter of Marque

            The Nutmeg of Consolation

The Thirteen Gun Salute

            The Truelove

            The Wine Dark Sea

This book picks up at the end of the fairly disastrous South American campaign in the last book. The Surprise returns to England, where both Stephen and Jack have family issues to deal with. 

Stephen’s wife, Diana, has given birth a few years back - Stephen hasn’t yet met his daughter Brigid. However, Diana, apparently overstressed by parenthood, has run off to goodness knows where, leaving Brigid in the care of Clarissa Oakes (a fascinating character from The Truelove). Brigid also appears to be autistic, unable to speak.

Jack, meanwhile, finds he has offended his wife Sophie by using some of the fabric intended for her to make a wedding dress for Ms. Oakes. (As I said, a really fascinating story…) So all is not well at the Aubry home, and Jack is predictably eager to be off on his next adventure.

If that wasn’t bad enough, one of Stephen’s enemies in Parliament has decided to make trouble for him. Technically, Clarissa is a criminal, having been transported to Australia, where she managed to stow away on the Surprise. Likewise, Stephen’s loyal assistant, Padeen, was transported a few books back for an incident involving Stephen’s laudanum. Basically, they both need an official pardon before they can legally be in England. This would be forthcoming in light of the circumstances (and Stephen’s influence), but for this enemy.

Fortunately for all concerned, a new mission is at hand. They will spend some time off the coast of Africa suppressing the slave trade while they wait for news that a French fleet has left for Ireland. They are to intercept this fleet and prevent it from inciting rebellion there.

So much for the basic setup of the plot. I won’t reveal the rest.

However, there are some great lines and passages worth mentioning.

Preserved Killick is one of the great characters in the series. Jack’s steward, he is described in this book as a “lean, cantankerous, and out of work ratcatcher.” And of course, plenty more of “Which I was already doing, ain’t I?”

Also interesting on the psychological side in this book was Jack’s response to female sexuality - both in theory and in practice. Anyone who is familiar with this series knows that Jack - particularly the younger Jack - slept around a good deal. He has an illegitimate son he fathered with an African woman, and spent a portion of the first book in bed with the wife of a fellow captain - an act which came back to bite him big time.

In a conversation with Stephen, Jack discusses a fellow captain who just came home to find his wife pregnant by another man. Jack notes that the captain “has never set up for chastity any more than I have,” and Jack reminded him of that. Of course, the captain responded with the double standard: “Oh, it is different for women.” At this point, Jack actually asserts that fair is fair.

And it is. But the problem is that Jack’s emotions do not follow his logic, and later in the book, when he believes (probably incorrectly) that Sophie is cheating on him, he cannot just let it go as “fair is fair.” Ah, such a difficult thing in practice when men are used to the entitlement to sow their oats when and how they like, but woe to the woman who does likewise.

The issue of slavery is front and center for the middle part of the book. O’Brian does not gloss over the horrors of the trade, and there are some very difficult scenes to read. (For what it is worth, I am concurrently reading Homegoing by Yaa Gayasi, which centers around the slave trade and its consequences over the ensuing centuries. Stay tuned for a review on that one.)

At one point, a particular sailor who has been stymied in his advancement is promoted by Jack, who, having a black son, understands that the “African great-grandmother” is the reason this competent seaman has been unable to become a lieutenant despite passing the test.

Another harrowing chapter in this book is the one where Stephen nearly dies of Yellow Fever. Poor Stephen has had a bad run of late, suffering greatly for his love of nature and attempts to collect specimens. Of course, back then, they didn’t know mosquitoes spread the disease, so prevention was difficult at best.

However, Stephen does manage to obtain a Potto, which is a cousin of the Loris. O’Brian manages to sneak some fauna into most of his books, and this is a particularly cute one. 

It isn’t just questions of sex that disquiet Jack in this book. There is also that of the captains he commands. For this mission, Jack is a Commodore and has several ships under his command. However, he mistrusts two of the captains greatly. One of them is a disciplinarian, intent on having the ship look good. But his seamanship is sloppy, his crew ill trained, and their gunnery is unspeakably bad. Another ship has a different problem. The captain is openly homosexual, and has a series of young men in and out of his cabin - men he then favors in front of the other sailors. Jack’s objection to this isn’t the sexuality per se: he likens it to keeping a hooker on board - it destroys morale and discipline, particularly since the captain is involved. He will not be respected if he doesn’t show respect to all his crew. So Jack is uneasy, because he does not have confidence in his captains. The one may face mutiny, and the other may not fight well at all.

Predictably, this leads to serious tension, particularly when the crews of each of the two ships get into it under the influence of adult beverages. One lieutenant insults another, and as noted in Commandment One (see below), if offense is given and no apology is forthcoming, then a duel is inevitable. Sadly, the young men forgot the 11th Commandment - shoot in the air - and they end up killing each other.

(And yes, that was definitely a good enough excuse to link “Ten Duel Commandments.”)

There is a great line before the climactic scene, where Stephen and Jack, each worried for their own reasons, exchange sympathy.

Stephen looked up, and after a moment said, “To a tormented mind there is nothing, I believe, more irritating that comfort. Apart from anything else it often implies superior wisdom in the comforter. But I am very sorry for your trouble, my dear.”

“Thank you, Stephen. Had you told me that there was always a tomorrow, I think I should have thrust your calendar down your throat.”

That’s just outstanding. And true.

One final humorous bit. Jack and Stephen are string players. (The large Jack on violin, the scrawny Stephen on cello.) Many evenings on board are wiled away with duets - and the pieces mentioned are often fun. In this book, Jack asks Stephen (again…) to borrow his rosin.

“I wonder - I have my own reasons for wondering - that a man of your I might almost say wealth, and of your standing, a member of Parliament, high on the post-captain’s list, and well at court, cannot or rather will not afford himself a piece of rosin.”

“You are to consider that I am a family man, Stephen, with a boy to educate and daughters to provide a dowry for, and clothes - half-boots twice and sometimes three times a year. Tippets. When you come to worry about Brigid’s fortune, and Brigid’s tippets, you too may economise on rosin.”

As the guy who always has extra strings, rosin, and a pencil, I sympathise with Stephen. At least my colleagues are great about paying me back.

Anyway, this book was another solid entry in a truly epic series. Unfortunately, I am nearing its end. If you haven’t discovered O’Brian, I do indeed recommend these books. But definitely read them in order.

Ghost Ship by Brian Hicks

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

The story of the Mary Celeste has fascinated for nearly 150 years. It has given rise to much speculation, and any number of outlandish theories involving aliens, pirates, and the Bermuda Triangle. It also, as I discovered in this book, resulted in a trial in which the very worst of lawyering and prosecutorial overreach was on full display.

The author also his own highly plausible theory as to what happened.

On December 4, 1872, the crew of the Dei Gratia spotted a ship. Something was amiss, because it was not behaving like a ship under control. It had few sails, sloppily hung, and didn’t seem to have rudder control. Upon investigation, they discovered that it was completely abandoned, yet without any signs as to how and why. Everything was still aboard the ship, including the foul weather gear and the sailors’ pipes. The hatches were all wide open. There was no storm damage or sign of foul play aboard. The captain, crew, and passengers were all vanished without a trace. The ship was the Mary Celeste, and the log’s last entry was a week prior to its discovery. 

The Mary Celeste

The crew of the Dei Gratia brought back the Mary Celeste at peril to themselves, and expected the usual salvage fee after a perfunctory trial. However, things quickly got out of hand, with the trial becoming an international sensation. Many suspected the crew of the Dei Gratia of foul play, despite the lack of evidence, and they finally, at length, were awarded a pittance for the salvage, after losing a great deal of time - and incurring a blot on their reputations. (No good deed goes unpunished…)

In all likelihood, a significant cause of the sensation was the resemblance of the case to a couple of legends, the Ancient Mariner of Coleridge’s poem, and the legend of the Flying Dutchman, which was turned into an opera by Richard Wagner not too long before the incident of the Mary Celeste.

The case had added poignancy, since the captain had taken his wife and baby daughter on the voyage. None of those aboard were ever seen again.

It was the actions of Frederick Solly Flood, the aged British Attorney General at Gibraltar, who would represent the Crown in the matter as if he were a prosecutor, that escalated the case far beyond what was warranted. His obsession with the case, which grew in strength and in absurdity as time passed, resulted in repeated inspections of the ship, increasingly outlandish theories, and a textbook example an out of control prosecutor.

Convinced that there must have been foul deeds, most likely an insurance fraud conspiracy, he refused to change this belief despite the growing evidence against him. The most ludicrous example of this centered around a sword found onboard. It was probably intended to be decorative and ceremonial. After all, the Mary Celeste was a smallish merchant ship, not a man-of-war. The sword probably never made it out of the scabbard on the wall until the investigation.

However, Flood was convinced that there were bloodstains on the sword, and that that was evidence of a fight. Never mind that there were certainly no signs of blood anywhere else on the ship. After much hay had been made about the sword, it was sent for chemical analysis, which showed with abundant clarity that the spots in question were, in fact, just rust.

Never mind the facts, though. Flood quickly changed his story to another scenario. The rust must have been caused when the sword was cleaned with lemon, in an attempt to “destroy and disguise the original marks of blood which were once there.” And thus do conspiracy theories get started.

The subsequent history of the Mary Celeste was interesting as well. After several more years operating as an economically marginal transport, it was intentionally wrecked in a real insurance fraud scheme. The fraud was poorly disguised, and the captain was arrested and tried. (He was acquitted, almost certainly because the crime was at that time capital, so juries rarely convicted.)  

Brian Hicks is no stranger to either historical subjects or maritime tales. He has written about other recovered wrecks and on other historical topics, both as a journalist and as an author.

For this book, he brings in information about the Mary Celeste from the time it was built in a Nova Scotia shipyard to the discovery of the wreck in 2001 by Clive Cussler’s NUMA organization. This includes significant biographical back story on the captain, Benjamin Briggs, and his family of ship captains. I found all of this to be fascinating, if painfully tragic. It was a reminder that seafaring has, throughout most of history, been a dangerous game, almost a Russian roulette of professions.

Hicks also brings in the full panoply of theories and legends. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a sensational story using the facts. So popular was the story that many of the “facts” that people remember about the case have turned out to have been invented in this story. Bela Lugosi starred in a lurid movie about the ship. Even Doctor Who got involved. Unsurprisingly, Daleks were responsible for the tragedy.

I won’t spoil the book by revealing Hicks’ theory, other than to say that it is at least plausible, and doesn’t require the intervention of unlikely events. Whether you agree or not, the case he makes is pretty good, even if there will never be complete certainty as to what happened. There is some dispute as to a few of the facts that his theory turns on. Unfortunately, there was no full transcript of the trial, only the notes taken by the judge, some of which were lost for decades. Thus, some of the facts that may have been helpful in retrospect are not preserved.

The author tells a good story, keeping the narrative interesting without indulging in sensationalism. The background information is all quite fascinating, and really adds to the whole.

For a bit more on the intentional wreck of the Mary Celeste, see this article.

Also, because I do stuff like this, here is the overture to Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman. Fans of Loony Tunes will recognize the first theme from “What’s Opera Doc?” Violinists everywhere will break out in cold sweats over the diminished arpeggios at the 8:52 mark.